Recent Updates and Currently Reading | July 15

Last night I got to meet Rachel Caine at a book reading/signing. She was fascinating! I am in awe of how fast she can write. I could have listened to her stories forever.

Posted Last Week

This past week I posted my review of Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero.

Read Last Week

An Anger Fallen was a quick read which was just what I needed. I'm almost done reading Every Dead Thing (the first book in the Charlie Parker series).

I'm still reading (and enjoying!) Stephen King's IT. It's a nostalgic read so far. There are things I remember well, and things I don't remember at all. It has a tough beginning! Right now we are taking a look at the adult lives of the characters in IT, and it's not pretty.

Review Copies

The Blackbird Season by Kate Moretti - The Blackbird Season is getting a lot of early praise. The blurb has a definite psychological thriller feel, but it makes no promises and there's no mention of "Gone Girl" or Paula Hawkins so my expectations are mercifully grounded.

Kind Nepenthe by Matthew V. Brockmeyer - Kind Nepenthe is one of this month's horror releases. Rebecca thought she'd find a hippie paradise when she moved to the desolate back hills of Humboldt County. A place to commune with nature and teach her five-year-old daughter how to live off the land. Instead she discovered a nightmare.

Current Distractions

• I've decided to DNF The Mist TV show after 3 episodes.
• I did start watching The Exorcist TV show last night, though! I'm really excited about the atmosphere so far. It's rare for TV.
• Last night I figured out I can pair my bluetooth headphones to my TV! This is going to open up a whole new world for me while the family is asleep.
• Wimbledon! My hubs and I decided if both Federer and Nadal won on Monday, we would both take vacation Friday. DAMN YOU, MULLER! But what a match between Nadal and Muller! I'm happy Muller got the win even though I was stuck in the office working yesterday. I feel like I'm getting a time capsule this weekend!! Federer AND Venus?! I love it so much. Do not forget Roddick and Clijsters will be inducted into the Hall of Fame next week. I haven't given a hoot about women's tennis since Clijsters retired, but I'm all about that Venus match today!
• Crochet: I'm currently making this Remembering Bruges Throw for my mom. I've been looking for a pattern with shells that wasn't all shells for a long time. I was very excited when they posted this pattern last week. It's stitching up fast.
  

So what about you? Let me know what you're reading (or watching) this week or leave me some links!

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This post is being shared as part of Book Date's It's Monday! What Are You Reading?, Tynga's Reviews' Stacking the Shelves, and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.

Book Review | Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

Meddling Kids is a horror mystery from Edgar Cantero.

For fans of John Dies at the End and Welcome to Night Vale comes a tour de force of horror, humor, and H.P. Lovecraft. The surviving members of a forgotten teenage detective club (and their dog) must reunite as broken adults to finally solve the terrifying case that ruined them all and sent the wrong man to prison. Scooby Doo and the gang never had to do this!

1990. The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in the Zoinx River Valley in Oregon) are all grown up and haven't seen each other since their fateful, final case in 1977. Andy, the tomboy, is twenty-five and on the run, wanted in at least two states. Kerri, one-time kid genius and budding biologist, is bartending in New York, working on a serious drinking problem. At least she's got Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the team. Nate, the horror nerd, has spent the last thirteen years in and out of mental health institutions, and currently resides in an asylum in Arhkam, Massachusetts. The only friend he still sees is Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star. The problem is, Peter's been dead for years.

The time has come to uncover the source of their nightmares and return to where it all began in 1977. This time, it better not be a man in a mask. The real monsters are waiting.

With raucous humor and brilliantly orchestrated mayhem, Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids taps into our shared nostalgia for the books and cartoons we grew up with, and delivers an exuberant, eclectic, and highly entertaining celebration of horror, life, friendship, and many-tentacled, interdimensional demon spawn.

Meddling Kids is about a teenage detective club reuniting as adults to go back and solve a mystery from their youth. In the prologue, one of the guys who was foiled by this teenage detective club (and their dog) is up for parole. The manner in which the parole board describes his apprehension involving "a high-speeding serving cart, two flights of stairs, and a fishing net" as well as his admission to staging a haunting in an old mansion and dressing up as a giant salamander was incredible. The prologue was so much fun, and it promised a Scooby Dooby great time!

The unfortunate thing about having a prologue is the excitement usually drops once the story gets underway, and the reader is left waiting for a promise to be fulfilled. That period of waiting is something I never enjoy, and when a book like Meddling Kids never delivers on that promise, the entire book can be very disappointing.

Even if the story itself had been a great one, the writing style in Meddling Kids was something I wouldn't have been able to overcome. The book kept popping in and out of screenplay format. It wasn't just random dialog being presented that way. There was also stage direction among the narrative.

I also had issue with the dialog itself. I don't mind a fucking f-bomb here or there, but 143 times in a 300 page book? There is no way I could have been invested enough in the story to not have been pulled back out due to the writing style, not to mention all of the made up words like "triviaed" and "tragichuckled".

Meddling Kids is being marketed for fans of Scooby Doo, but it definitely wasn't for me. In the end, the only thing that worked for me was the first 10 pages.

2/10: Hated It

Review copy provided by the publisher

Recent Updates and Currently Reading | July 9

What a great bookish weekend this has turned out to be! Yesterday my husband and I went to one of Andy Davidson's book signings. {See my review of In the Valley of the Sun}

Andy Davidson and me

Andy did a Q&A, and then we were treated to a reading from In the Valley of the Sun. (It made me want to read it all over again.) I also got to meet Andy's wife Crystal (she's absolutely adorable and a great champion of Andy's work), Bob Pastorella who is also a horror author and a co-host of the This is Horror podcast, and Kenneth DeVille, a local author.

Posted Last Week

Who knew July was going to be such a huge month for horror releases? Last week I posted all of the horror books releasing in July. Go check them out!

Read Last Week

After reading Edith Wharton's Summer, I was still in the mood for a classic so I read The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I also read Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids. Guys, it was worse than Little Heaven for me. I need a quick slump busting read stat!

Current Distractions

• I finished season one of Game of Thrones. I knew not to get attached to anyone, but wow, that was fast!!
• I finally watched John Wick: Chapter 2.
• I watched the first couple of episodes of The Mist. The characters are annoying (classic Stephen King TV, amirite?), but the show is getting scary and I dig that.
• We've had a couple additions to the summer of board games recently with Tsuro (a tile laying strategy game) and Forbidden Island (our first co-op game). They are both gorgeous games and so far a lot of fun, too!
• Wimbledon! Wimbledon is my super bowl so these two weeks are always a favorite of my summer. The first week has been a big disappointment as far as sportsmanship goes, but I'm going to shake it off and enjoy every minute of week 2 tennis.

So what about you? Let me know what you're reading (or watching) this week or leave me some links!

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This post is being shared as part of Book Date's It's Monday! What Are You Reading? and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.

July 2017 New Horror Releases | Horror Spotlight

What an amazing month for horror! I love when I get to feature this many horror books in my spotlight post.

I'm in the middle of reading Meddling Kids right now, and I see McCammon has a new tale in Dark Screams: Volume Seven.

I hear The Sound of Broken Ribs is Edward Lorn's best work yet.

Nightmare Magazine, Issue 58 by Nightmare Magazine
Published July 1st 2017 by John Joseph Adams

Deadman's Tome: Monsters Exist edited by Deadman, Theresa Braun
Published July 1st 2017 by Deadman's Tome

I Wish I Was Like You by S.P. Miskowski
Expected publication: July 7th 2017 by JournalStone



Safe Haven: Realm of the Raiders by Christopher Artinian
Expected publication: July 7th 2017 by Headless RAM Publishing

Short and Creepy: Ten Weird Tales by J.M. Pedri
Expected publication: July 10th 2017 by J.M. Pedri

Abode by Morgan Sylvia
Expected publication: July 10th 2017 by Bloodshot Books



Final Girls by Riley Sager
Expected publication: July 11th 2017 by Dutton

The Devil's Colony by Bill Schweigart
Expected publication: July 11th 2017 by Hydra

The Best Horror of the Year Volume Nine (The Best Horror of the Year #9) edited by Ellen Datlow
Expected publication: July 11th 2017 by Night Shade Books



Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
Expected publication: July 11th 2017 by Doubleday Books

Nights of the Living Dead: Anthology edited by Jonathan Maberry
Expected publication: July 11th 2017 by St. Martin's Griffin



The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files #8) by Charles Stross
Expected publication: July 11th 2017 by Tor.com

Death by Paul Kane
Expected publication: July 15th 2017 by The Sinister Horror Company

Through the Abyssal Gates by Brian J. W. Lee
Expected publication: July 15th 2017 by Brian J. W. Lee



Naming The Bones: Dark Minds Novella 5 by Laura Mauro
Expected published July 15th 2017 by Dark Minds Press

The Journal of Jeremy Todd by John Quick
Expected publication: July 15th 2017 by Sinister Grin Press

Apocalypse Barnes (The Gentrified Dead #1) by Andrew K. Lawston
Expected publication: July 17th 2017



Cottingley by Alison Littlewood
Expected publication: July 17th 2017 by Newcon Press

Night Moves: A Collection of the Bizarre, the Tragic, and the Horrifying by Mary SanGiovanni
Expected publication: July 21st 2017 by Post Mortem Press

Raid by K.S. Merbeth
Expected publication: July 25th 2017 by Orbit



Dark Screams: Volume Seven edited by Brian James Freeman
Expected publication: July 25th 2017 by Hydra

Entertaining Demons by Daniel I. Russell
Expected publication: July 25th 2017 by Apex Publications



The Truants by Lee Markham
Expected publication: July 25th 2017 by The Overlook Press

Bone White by Ronald Malfi
Expected publication: July 25th 2017 by Kensington Publishing Corporation

Hounds of the Underworld by Dan Rabarts, Lee Murray
Expected publication: July 26th 2017 by Raw Dog Screaming Press



These Deathless Bones by Cassandra Khaw
Expected publication: July 26th 2017 by Tor Books

Kind Nepenthe by Matthew V Brockmeyer
Expected publication: July 27th 2017 by Black Rose Writing

Those Who Follow by Michelle Garza, Melissa Lason
Expected publication: July 28th 2017 by Bloodshot Books



BEHOLD! Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders by Doug Murano
Expected publication: July 28th 2017 by Crystal Lake Publishing

Day of the Serpent (Ouroboros #3) by David Longhorn
Expected publication: July 31st 2017 by ScareStreet.com

The Sound of Broken Ribs by Edward Lorn
Published July 2017 by Thunderstorm Books

As always, be sure to let me know if there are any horror books releasing in July that didn't make it onto my list!

Recent Updates and Currently Reading | July 1

Somehow the year is half way over already. I was looking at my 2017 reading goals last week and wow, my progress has been terrible. Thankfully I'm ahead of my Goodreads challenge. I've read no non-fiction and my pre-2017 TBR remains unread although I am currently reading Dan Simmons' Summer of Night from my shelves, and I'm about to reread IT which will count, too.

If you've been thinking about reading Stephen King's IT before the movie comes out, author Daniel Kraus is doing a 10 week readalong/discussion over at The Booklist Reader. A lot of folks are planning to join in. It should be pretty awesome. Check it out and join us.

Posted Last Week

Book Review | No Mercy by Alessandro Manzetti
Book Review | Skitter by Ezekiel Boone

Read Last Week

After reading No Mercy I needed a palate cleanser. Edith Wharton's Summer did just the trick.

Review Copies

BEHOLD! Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders edited by Doug Murano - This list of writers says it all: Clive Barker, John Langan, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Lisa Morton, Brian Kirk, Hal Bodner, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Erinn Kemper, John F.D. Taff, Patrick Freivald, Lucy Snyder, Brian Hodge, Kristi DeMeester, Christopher Coake, Sarah Read, and Richard Thomas. With a foreword by Josh Malerman.

A Life Removed by Jason Parent - I've had my eye on Jason Parent's books for a while now, and I'm excited to finally check one out. He's traditionally a horror writer, but this one looks more like a crime thriller.

An Angel Fallen by Andy Graham - Sometimes a book simply has me at "horror novella".

Current Distractions

Seriously, I dropped everything last week for GLOW. It's on Netflix, and it's incredible.

So what about you? Let me know what you're reading (or watching) this week or leave me some links!

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This post is being shared as part of Book Date's It's Monday! What Are You Reading?, Tynga's Reviews' Stacking the Shelves, and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.